Sketchup 5.0 Book Reviews?

[Joseph Skowron]

Anyone have the book and is it worth purchasing for the $88 (US)? I'm a beginner and is buying the book a good choice, especially for the cost of the book?

[Jeff Mottle]

I'll be posting a review of this book tonight.

[philip kelly]

It's too expensive the programme is 460 euros, the book is nearly 85 euros, this seems a too expensive.........

are am i being tight?

phil

[Jeff Mottle]

The review has been posted: http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review049_1.asp

I don't think you can compare the price of training to the price of the software. Learning a program and the cost of that learning should be compared to what your time is worth. I don't know about you, but $80 is not even an hour of my time. If I could learn an application more quickly the potential time savings would easily be worth $80.

It's like saying you are not going to buy Sketchup because your time to learn the application would be more than the application itself. You have to compare apples to apples. Just my 2 cents. I've personally not read the book, but just this review.

[Joseph Skowron]

Thanks for the review. See in my case, I just been employed by a company that uses Sketchup on a regular basis. I am used to using 3D MAX, but i like sketchup and I know that it'll be the main software being used at the office. I think i might just pick the book up. I figure that i can keep it at the office and use it as a reference guide, it'll only help me out in the long run.

[Russell Thomas]

Our office just purchased the book based on the review here. I took the book home this weekend to take a gander, it is a big book with more illustration than actual text, each paragraph has an illustration to go with it, so you can actually just look at the pictures and stop to read when you see something you aren't certain how to do. There are some strong points in the book, it seems to focus strongly on each of the tools and options and not as much on actual architectural application. That isn't a negative about it, I figure if you know all the basics you can apply them to your own work flow. I would perhaps have liked to see a chapter going over a complete project with some intracate modeling, but it does cover what you would need to know to do that, just scattered through all the other material it covers. I wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't for seeing it here at CGA.

[Joseph Skowron]

Im still not sure whether to pick the book up or not. My firm just sent me to a SketchUp class last week and it started out very basic, but i did learn a couple new things. The instructor was using tutorials straight out of the book.